CHURCH RESCUE WORK.

Otago Witness, Issue 2860, 6 January 1909, Page 18

CHURCH RESCUE WORK.

VIGOROUS EPISCOPAL ADDRESS. fFsou Oub Own Cobbespondent ) LONDON, November 13. Yesterday at the Qhurch House, Westminster, the annual meetings of the Church Penitentiary Association for promoting and aiding the establishment and maintenance of penitentiaries and houses of refuge were held. At the conference for workers, which took place in the evening, Bishop Neligan was in the chair, and in the course of his remarks he said with respect to not telling the girls what "sort of place the home was. it seemed to him that was the eort of 1 mistake that ran through a pood deal of the work tJiat was called religious. He ! supposed it could be described as making" , religion so pleasant that it was not worth very much. The New Testament was a very stern book. The thing they were aiming at in rescue work waa the salvatipn of the soul. Sin was not a mistake. Sin waa sin. Experience of rescue work in Auckland showed that a great many ! of the girls in the St. Mary's Homes were I mentally defective — using the term scien- ! tifically. They had very little development lof will, and apparently the intelligence in many cases had not been developed very much. There was another class — the . neurotic. In a battle with suoh sections lof the community they had to be very I gentle and at the same time firm. He I had a holy horror of government by com- ; mirtees. The chief object of a committea 1 was financial, and the Auckland committee, he was glad to say, was as near idee] as possible. They had started the work in Auckland with the very best lady the order could send, and now her health had given way they had another equally good. Their pla-n was to get the very best trained worker possible and say, " Now there is tlie work ; go and do it in the name of the Lord." The committee would not interfere Yvith the work. The late Mr Sedd-on had investigated the work, and said it was the best he knew in the South Seas, and that tho lady in charge had forgotten more than any other' four people in New Zealand had ever known of the <-übjeet. If a young country could do that sort of work, the Old Country could do it. — (Applause.) Mr? Neligan ako spoke. She said that wJi-en she wad taken over the homos at Auckland she had not been told a fiingle surname of any inmate. She had not b told the details of a single case. — (Applause.) She did think the committee had rather a J^ad feeling- somptirr.es that they were only concerned with finance. — (Liughter.) She did not think the Auckland committee wai vet .-atisfiod. — (Rcn wed laughter.) Papers and more addrevsc were sriven by vancui speakers and ruade.s.

A number r>f ladies arid a^intlomen in Whangarci have e-.'aV>lishc-d a fund for pro\i<Jin£ prizes f < r fr>f» bo-t garden, planted ar>d kfpt by children :t+tendii'<y t local j-chcols. The schoni3 i\ pio\intj a gn»at sucoo ■>. Tho 1 o'. s ard trirla take an im-nien-o intfM-c-t in their little plot-, and most of them «ro said to grow flowers and vepelable- rjuite eqiuil to those produced by adult amateur gardeners